Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Although few people own an alarm clock nowadays, it is compulsory
to borrow a big one for the obligatory press shot when an excited new breakfast presenter
joins a radio station. They need to clutch it, perhaps point at it; and smile. They
must be in a studio, and headphones must be worn. Not around the head, but draped daintily around
the neck. If they ask you to bring a
cornflake packet, pyjamas or lie in a bed with your co-host, just say no. Say you've changed your mind about hosting the 'flagship show' after all.

When the local charity raises some sorely needed cash with
the help of the station, make sure you hold one end of the large presentation cheque
and point to the amount of the ‘boost’, grinning stupidly. After all, you truly are ‘in tune’; and you have
‘hit the right note’. Similarly, a station
must be ‘rapped’ if it ‘hits the wrong note’.

As for understanding audience figures, it is obligatory for
press to fail to grasp the intricacies of Rajar; and the fact that if a station
loses a couple of thousand listeners it might, in reality, have done better than
last time. Mind you, that would confuse
me too; and the press must get pretty sick of us all being ‘delighted’.

New presenters never leave one station for another. Oh no,
they are ‘poached’. If they are not
poached they are ‘axed’. Probably by ‘station chiefs’. Both sound painful. When life gets really
tough for a 'motormouth' or 'bonkers' DJ, then it’s just got to be a case of ‘DJ in a spin’. Even if you've 'scooped' an award, which will doubtless be a 'Radio Oscar', whatever it is.

Be sure to let the press know the name of your station. Without
knowing the correct answer, there’s a risk they might accidentally get it
right. Tell them the correct answer, and they can avoid it. They’ll use ‘FM’ where
you have ‘radio’; and vice versa. If you have a brand and no suffix they’ll
dream one up for you. It’ll naturally be one which has never been on ‘the
airwaves’. Those lovely airwaves. Does that word ever appear anywhere in real
life apart from a newspaper?

Mind you, at least they have mentioned your brand. Some forget you have a name and all your
efforts are simply attributed to ‘a radio station’. Mind you, if those efforts result in any
manner of crisis, your name will suddenly be recalled.Since first writing this blog, I was amused to read coverage of the end of the redoubtable award-winning 'Beryl and Betty' on BBC Radio Humberside. The Daily Mail duly informed us that the pair planned to 'hang up their mics'. Just like we all do at the end of our shows. What? Headphones, I guess, can be hung up, and that alliterates usefully too. But hanging up a mic?

Thank goodness we, in radio, are immune from clichés on-air.
I’d hate to get the green light for that sort of behaviour.